AppIOS: Platform for Building Next Generation Enterprise Software

Project Information

AppIOS

Grant agreement ID: 685343

DOI

10.3030/685343

Project closed

EC signature date 11 June 2015

Start date 1 June 2015

End date 31 October 2015

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

STARCOUNTER AB
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AppIOS (AppIOS: Platform for Building Next Generation Enterprise Software)

Reporting period: 2015-06-01 to 2015-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Enterprise software is the core of IT solutions to run everyday business. Despite it is the largest software market with turnaround 500 billion dollars annually, development and user experience is much behind modern software development. Modern mobile devices allow seamlessly decide, install and play with numerous mobile apps from an app store developed by many independent vendors and talents. Modern Web demonstrates real time responsiveness. However, enterprise software market does not provide any similar quality app stores and responsiveness of systems requires patience especially in a high load. More specifically:
- It is difficult to enter the market and time-to-market is huge;
- The built solutions are extremely complex and it is difficult to manage and extend them;
- The market is characterized with high failure rate of IT projects;
- Businesses and enterprises have hard times to provide desired functionality;
- Delivery of new features to customers is long and costly;
- End users are unsatisfied with their experience.
Our aim to change how enterprise software is built and to enable enterprise app stores. We designed our next-generation platform to build software modules, like apps, by independent vendors, domain experts and talents, and run independent apps together by choosing them from an app store and starting on single server powered by our platform. This enables true app store with apps to constitute best enterprise software solutions. Furthermore, an ecosystem, demonstrated in the figure, will arise with app stores and solutions from and for different ISVs and enterprises and with contributions not only from ISVs and enterprises but also from talents.
Real time responsiveness and high performance is provided through use of Starcounter’s high performing in-memory database and platform.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We proposed a design of the next-generation platform based on our own experience and general experience in software development. We implemented the first version of the next-generation platform, which extend our in-memory application platform, and created apps.
Our partners started to develop apps for the platform to create their future products in the area of their expertise. Developers in Starcounter are also producing apps. Those apps, which come from several vendors now, are mixed and run together to enhance functionality and to test our concept and the platform. This evaluation demonstrates feasibility of our solution.
We proposed a new business model, which is attractive for developers. We also keep, as an option, the licensing business model, which is traditional for enterprise software.
As result of the feasibility study, we identified development and marketing work needed to commercialise our next-generation platform and app store ecosystem.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Simplified development due to removed complexity and ability to reuse apps available on the market will allow building new enterprise software in much shorter time and with richer functionality than nowadays. This is expected to considerable reduce failure rate, improve user experience and boost businesses.
Another social-economic impact comes from opening enterprise software market to large number of ISVs, domain and local experts and individual talents. Developers from all over the world including developing countries would be able to participate in rich enterprise software market. Time-to-market for ISVs and their solutions will reduce, failure rate of new launchers will decrease and wide range of product will appear on the market.
High performance of Starcounter in-memory platform allows reducing hardware and energy consumption footprint considerable, which is positive environmental impact. It was already demonstrated that solutions on top of Starcounter runs on single server vs hundred servers of traditional system.

Enabled enterprise software ecosystem